


Come Through

by Order_Of_The_Forks



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Death, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Panic Attacks, Sort of a vent, Suicidal Thoughts, Tree Bros, Tree Bros AU, lots of dark themes, pretty much all the trigger warnings, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-03-17 14:30:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13660944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Order_Of_The_Forks/pseuds/Order_Of_The_Forks
Summary: On a mundane and rainy Saturday in early February, two junior girls from the public high school were crossing the street when a car, operated by a drunk driver, careened out of his control and hit the girls in the middle of the street. One girl died on site, while the other was put into intensive care where she died less than 24 hours later.And for the first time since September 11, 2001, the town stood still.





	1. Silence

On a mundane and rainy Saturday in early February, two junior girls from the public high school were crossing the street when a car, operated by a drunk driver, careened out of his control and hit the girls in the middle of the street. One girl died on site, while the other was put into intensive care where she died less than 24 hours later.

And for the first time since September 11, 2001, the town stood still.

Every news station in the area covered whatever information they had about the accident. The street where it happened became a swarm of news crews and people with cameras, replacing the ambulances that had been there just before.

On Monday, Connor Murphy and every other teenager in the district went to school.

Connor walked, like he always did. His feet felt heavy. Every step was deliberate. On the crosswalk by where the accident had happened was a large heap of bouquets, teddy bears, pictures of the girls, and the like.

Inside the building was worse. 

The students, who were usually hubs of energy that exploded about their lives at 150 decibels, were quiet. They walked to their first period classes in silence, their faces stony. In first period, Connor’s English teacher cried while trying to talk about To Kill A Mockingbird and ended up having to stand in the hallway for a few minutes to compose herself. There was an announcement about the tragedy and a moment of silence that every student in the building observed.

It was eerie.

And Connor felt angry.

He was angry at the drunk driver for being so fucking idiotic. He was angry at the teachers for trying to continue their classes as if nothing had happened. And mostly, he was angry at himself.

Connor was mad at himself for being so unfeeling. 

He felt tired and heavy, like his bones were filled with cement and his mind was waterlogged. He contemplated mortality and thought about suicide in the casual way one considers going to the store. But he didn’t cry, not once. Not when he saw the banner outside that said “WE ARE STRONG”. Not when he heard one of the girl’s boyfriend sobbing inside a bathroom stall. 

As Connor picked at his lunch alone in the strangely silent cafeteria, he watched the people pass, all at different states of despair. The difference with this tragedy, he thought, was that it was sudden. It wasn’t like a suicide. Suicide was deliberate, it was meaningful. It wasn’t like someone who had fought cancer or some other disease for a long time and eventually lost. 

This was completely unplanned and unanticipated. These were two young girls who were very much alive, who wanted to stay alive. Who were on the cross-country team and ate cafeteria pizza on Fridays and went to shitty school dances. The randomness of death was what shocked them all.

It forced people to think about their own mortality. One moment, you’re there. And then in the next, you’re gone. Never to be seen again.

Fleetingly, Connor noted that he would never see those girls walking down the hall again. He would never see them sitting in a cafeteria table, talking animatedly. They would never climb the stairs up to the 700s and pull back the stick attached to a spring to keep the fire hydrants from getting lost in the snow when they walked down the sidewalk ever again.

They were juniors. They were probably doing their college applications. They had probably been excited for prom. They had friends and teammates who counted on them.

Connor felt even more alone than ever. If he died, who would mourn him? Would anybody leave flowers where he had died, or would they just avert their eyes and walk past? What song would they play at his funeral?

These were the thoughts that fogged Connor’s mind when a teary-eyed girl wandered up to his table and handed him a flyer.

“I’m starting a group to try and plant memorial trees near the spot where Emma and Reagan… where the accident happened. Would you be interested?” She tugged at her braids that were coming loose from the blue ribbon tying them in a chic ponytail. 

Connor’s brain was clearly clouded with thoughts of death and his own mortality because he grabbed the paper limply and mumbled a “yeah, sure.”

The girl smiled through her tears. “Thank you so much. We meet tomorrow after school.”

And Connor was alone once more.

When school ended, there were news crews filming as the girls’ friends and families laid mementos and gifts on the ever-growing pile of flowers. Connor pulled his hood over his head as he passed. 

The walk home felt longer than usual. Every step, every breath, every blink was a reminder that he was Alive and these girls were not. 

At home, Connor went to the bathroom, locked the door, and sat down in front of the cabinet under the sink, staring at the bottle of bleach with blank eyes. He didn’t move, just looked at the bleach and felt his sleeves itch until his head hurt. 

When he did his homework, Connor dragged his pencil across the back of his hand and looked at the light strokes he had made before smudging the lines away. 

At dinner, Zoe cried. Her best friend was dead, she blubbered into her peas. They were supposed to go get ice cream on Sunday.

Connor left the table early.

Time passed strangely. At some times, it was molasses. When Connor stopped outside of the pile of flowers that had already begun to wilt as he walked to school on Tuesday and just stared as people on all sides shoved past him to get to the building, time slowed to a crawl. Everybody else was moving at supersonic speed while Connor could barely lift his arm. He felt like he was moving through water. 

When the girl in his French class threw a textbook at him for looking at her weird as she cried, time snaps. One moment, he’s suggesting that she go to the counselor’s office. The next, there’s a textbook on the floor behind him and a hole in the wall and the class has erupted into noise. 

One moment you’re alive. The next you’re dead.

Connor wondered, faintly, as the girl got escorted out of the classroom and his ears rang as if a plane had taken off next to him, if when you died time dragged like the time before Christmas or if it ran right through you before you even knew what hit you.

Zoe skipped school that day. 

After school, Connor followed the instructions on the crumpled flyer in his pocket to room 231, where two people sat in the room in silence. One was the girl who had given him the flyer. Her braids were loose today and she had ditched the stylish button-down/jeans combo for a pair of leggings and a sweatshirt that read “NATIONAL HONORS SOCIETY 2015”. The one other member was a boy Connor had seen in his experiential chemistry class. He was one of the three that had refused to dissect a frog and instead were sent to the library to work independently on a research paper. 

The girl smiled as Connor walked in. “And that’s the last of them!” She said cheerily. “Of course, Zoe couldn’t come today on account of her being sick, but she told me she was interested.”

“Zoe Murphy?” Connor asked, still standing awkwardly in the doorway. 

“Yes. Do you know her?”

“Yeah, she’s my sister. And she’s not sick, she’s crying at home like she has been the past four days.” Connor moved to a desk in the corner and sank into the chair, dumping his backpack on the ground next to him.

“Oh. Well, tell her if she needs a shoulder to cry on we’re all more than willing to help her.” The girl took off her glasses and polished them. “But anyway, this is us. We might be small in numbers, but we’re certainly a group of driven young people who are passionate about honoring our friends lost too soon. My name is Alana and I will be president, given that I started the club, and Evan is our co-president slash tree expert.”

Connor nodded vacantly.

“I did some googling and decided that we should plant two cherry blossom trees just next to the crosswalk.” Alana pushed her glasses up her nose with a knuckle and pulled a sheet of paper out of her backpack. “In Japanese culture, the cherry blossom represents the fragility and beauty of life. It’s a reminder that life is almost overwhelmingly beautiful but that it is also tragically short.” She paused. “Do you like that quote? I got it from an article from the Huffington Post.”

“Cherry, um, cherry blossom trees are able to be cultivated in-in the US,” the boy, Evan, said.

“Perfect!” Alana looked at her sheet again. “I did some more research and the average cost of a Kwanzan cherry tree is $79.99. We’ll need two of them, so that’s roughly 160 dollars. Does anybody have any ideas on how to raise money?”

“We could do a bake sale?” Evan suggested.

Alana wrote that down. Connor noticed that she stuck out her tongue just the slightest bit as she wrote. “Anything else? I was thinking a donations bucket at the next cross-country meet?”

“People don’t go to those,” Connor said, flat. 

“Oh.” Alana looked deflated. “I just thought-”

“Yeah. Yeah, no, it was a good idea. Just… nobody ever goes to those.” 

“Oh,” Alana repeated. She laughed weakly. “I guess I know less about sports than I thought I did.”

“We could do o-one of those, um, those all school challenges?” Evan said. “Like, donate five dollars and-and Mr. O’Ryan will shave his head?”

 

“Ooh, I like that.” Alana wrote it down. Connor watched with distant interest as Alana stuck out her tongue, tucked her pencil behind her ear, and pushed up her glasses with her knuckle.

Connor tried to think of all the school-sponsored events Zoe had tried to drag him to. Raise money for cancer, help fund a trip to Montreal. “A walkathon.”

“Interesting. How about an all-town 5K?”

“No,” Evan and Connor said at the same time. “That would mean exercise,” Connor muttered.

“I think a bake sale and a walkathon are our most solid ideas. Do we want to take a vote?”

Nobody responded. Connor looked at a hole in the wall above Alana’s left shoulder, much like the dent made by the French 3 textbook that had barely missed his head.

“Okay. Raise your hand if you want a bake sale.” 

Connor raised his hand halfheartedly.

“Raise your hand if you want a walkathon?”

Alana and Evan both raised their hands. 

“It looks like we’re doing a walkathon,” Alana said, scribbling on her paper. “I think that sounds like fun. And as members of the cross-country team, I’m sure it’s what Emma and Reagan would’ve wanted.” Her voice choked on the last word. “I’m sorry. I just- I can’t believe they’re-”

“Gone?” Connor supplied.

She laughed and rubbed at her eyes. “Yeah. Really puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?”

Connor thought about the night before, when he had eyed Zoe’s pink plastic razor in the shower and contemplating just slitting his wrists in the offhand way one contemplates what shea butter really is and why it’s in shampoo.

“Yeah.” Evan’s voice came soft and shaky. “It really does.”

And for the first time, Connor felt like he was going to cry. 

How stupid would that be? A voice in his head scoffed. Three teenagers crying alone in a classroom. 

So Connor swallowed the lump in his throat and picked at his cuticles and waited for the quiet sobs to stop.

Alana, who had a professional demeanor the entire meeting, seemed shattered. She had pushed her glasses up to the top of her head and was wiping her eyes furiously. She was an ugly, messy crier. Evan, however, was quieter. More polite. His tears ran silently as he folded in on himself, cradling his broken arm that he had procured sometime over winter break. His cast was still stark white and bare, a contrast from the more popular kids with signatures covering the entire thing. Evan cried like he was used to crying.

Alana wiped at her eyes with her palm and pushed her glasses back into place. “Yo-you know,” she said, her voice shaky, “Reagan was in my gym class. She was on the varsity basketball team, you know. And-and every gym class after she had tied her shoes she would jump up and touch the basketball net just because she could.” She took a quivering breath. “And I keep expecting her to when I walk into gym class, but-but she never does.”

Connor closed his eyes. What would people miss about him, if he died? Would they walk down the halls and think, ‘oh, I remember how Connor Murphy would always slam his locker when he closed it. The halls are empty without his slamming locker door.’

“I-I think this meeting is adjourned,” Alana said. “Let’s meet next Tuesday to talk more about the walkathon.”

Evan nodded silently, grabbed his bag, and started to leave. Connor took his bag and followed, feeling strangely hollow inside. 

Outside, on the street corner where it happened, the flowers had been moved. Connor didn’t know by who. Maybe the street cleaners, maybe the police, maybe the school. All that was left were shriveled flower petals and a small picture of the two girls, smiling side by side. 

As Connor watched, a gust of wind blew the picture away where it landed in some neighbor’s yard, nestled in the mud. 

Connor looked at Emma’s face, smiling up from the dirt. 

He tried to smile back.


	2. Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some redemption is in order.

On Thursday, Connor stayed home from school. He tried to go, he really did. But when he got out of bed to use the bathroom he just felt… heavy.

Every movement ached.

Connor climbed back in bed and waited for his mother to come up and see what was the matter like she always did.

Sure enough, less than ten minutes later Connor heard a soft knock on his door.

“Connor? Sweetie?” Came his mother’s voice. She spoke softly, as if she expected him to still be asleep. “Are you going to school today?”

“I don’t think I’m up for it,” he mumbled. 

“Oh. Well, it has been a hard time for everyone. Listen. I’m going to be out most of the day, but Zoe’ll be home with you. Okay?” Cynthia paused. “I know you don’t love talking to her, but I think she could really benefit from some quality time with her brother right now.”

“Maybe,” Connor said.

The door shut softly. Connor stayed in bed, staring at a scuff mark on the wall by his bookshelf. It was still sort of dark in the room, but Connor knew that it would get bright in about a half hour.

He closed his eyes and lied in the comfort of his bed, reveling in the warmth. Downstairs, dishes clattered and his parents argued.

“Playing hooky,” came a snippet of a sentence from under the door, deep and decisive. His father. 

A softer voice, less sure. “Rough on everyone.”

Connor pressed a pillow over his ears and tried to block out the arguing, tried to block out the sound of Zoe’s sobs that had been ringing through the house all weekend, tried to block out the lurking thoughts of ‘take those pills in the medicine cabinet and down them all’. 

The door slammed once, Larry leaving for work, and then once again, Cynthia leaving for whatever activity she had planned for the day. Maybe hot yoga or a wine club. 

The house was quiet. 

Connor tried not to think. He kept his mind blank by trying to count his breaths, which only lasted him to about 23 before his mind said ‘fuck it’ and started wandering like somebody lost in the subway station.

If he died, the world would be short one Connor Murphy. The desk in the corner of his history classroom would be empty. The apple in his locker would start to rot. His chair at the dining room table would get dusty, his blue toothbrush untouched. 

Eventually the rising sun was too much to bear and Connor crawled out of his blanket cave, stumbling to the bathroom, bleary-eyed. 

When he looked in the mirror, he wanted to vomit. There was something about seeing his tired face, gaunt and pale and painfully alive, that just seemed despicable. How dare he be taking up space on the planet that should’ve belonged to Emma and Reagan: popular, sweet, and attractive. Instead there was just him, mean and reclusive with a scowl that seemed permanently etched on his face.

Connor thought he saw a flicker of a person out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned around the only thing there was Zoe’s fuzzy pink bathrobe hanging on the back of the door. 

Great, now he was seeing fucking ghosts.

Connor walked downstairs and grabbed a box of Cheez-its from the cabinet, one of the only snacks his mother allowed in the house due to both of the kids’ obsessions with the food. He had the full intention of going back to his room and spending the day eating junk, sleeping, and watching shitty youtube videos.

But when he passed Zoe’s room, the door was opened. Zoe was sitting up in bed, feverishly writing in a composition notebook. 

Connor knocked on the doorframe softly. “Hey, Zo.”

Zoe looked up. Her eyes were bloodshot with large purple bags under them. They looked like Connor’s eyes. “Oh. Hi. What do you want?”

Connor couldn’t ignore the sting in her words. “Nothing. I just… how are you doing?”

“Sort of like shit, honestly.” Zoe laughed breathily. “How’re you?”

“I’ve been better.” Connor leaned against the doorframe. “Mom, uh, I wanted to talk to you.”

Zoe cocked an eyebrow. “About what? Did you get your license suspended again?”

“No. I just wanted to talk to you. You know, like normal people do.” Connor bit at the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. “If you don’t want to…”

“No, um, no. Yeah. Come in.” Zoe closed her notebook and placed it by her bed. “You can sit, uh…”

Connor sat down in the middle of Zoe’s floor, running his fingers across the soft white carpet. Zoe stretched as best she could from her bed, yawning in her phlegmy dragon-like way that just sounded like ‘CHCHCHCHCHKKK’ in a way that Connor kept trying to find a good metaphor for but never had been able to. 

She was wearing bright orange pajama pants with cartoon sushi on them and a magenta shirt with the words ‘TAKE BACK THE NIGHT’ printed across the chest. Connor shoved a handful of Cheez-its into his mouth. “You look like you just stepped out of the Gryffindor common room.”

“I’ll take it,” Zoe said.

They sat in silence, the air thick with memories that both would rather suppress. There were lots of stains on the carpet, spilled paint and nail polish and juice. A chunk was missing out of her yellow desk. If Connor remembered correctly, he put it there freshman year.

“What, um, what are they doing at school?” Zoe asked, tugging at the collar of her shirt. 

Connor gnawed on the inside of his cheek. “Nothing, really. My History teacher had us play seven-up the other day for an hour.”

Zoe laughed awkwardly. “Wow.”

“They have therapy in the library, you know.” Connor paused. “For kids who were. Affected.”

“Sounds like shit,” Zoe said with a smirk.

Connor could taste blood. “They have therapy dogs. It could help. And I, um, I think Alana misses you.”

Zoe smiled. “Maybe I’ll go tomorrow. You know, for the dogs.”

Connor grinned down at the carpet. “For the dogs.”

 

~

 

Zoe walked to school the next day. It was Friday, and by this point the students had recovered enough to talk to their friends as they went about their lives.

Connor was pretty sure that his mother had cried when Zoe had announced she was going back to school over breakfast. 

“I’m so proud of you, honey,” she had warbled. “You’re so brave.”

Technically, according to Cynthia, Connor was supposed to be walking with her. For “emotional support”. But both Zoe and Connor were more than happy to put in their headphones and walk in silence, Zoe dragging behind Connor by a few feet due to her shorter legs.

Zoe sang while she walked, Connor noticed.

She would put on music and sing along, her lilting voice cutting through the noise in his own headphones. Connor turned off his music and listened. He didn’t really like the song anyway.

She sang with soul, like the rest of the world wasn’t there. 

It was some song in a language Connor recognized vaguely from his childhood, high and earthy and Irish-sounding. 

Connor walked the rest of the way listening secretly to Zoe. When she stopped singing at the crosswalk to the high school, he didn’t want to admit how much he wanted her to keep going.

In English class, the teacher put on some weird-ass documentary about whales to fill the time. Most students just messed around on their phones.

Connor watched as the girl in front of him played some sort of cupcake-matching game on her computer. It was sort of mesmerizing, in its own mindless way.

At lunch, Connor sat on the steps outside the cafeteria and watched the people inside. 

Connor must’ve been too invested in watching Alana beck comfort some girl he thought was named Christina because he didn’t even notice the person sneaking up behind him.

“Can I, um, can I join you?” Came a voice, awkward and tentative.

Connor turned to see Evan, standing with his hands so tight around his lunch tray his knuckles were white. As if he expected Connor to hit his tray out of his hands like they were living in a bad 80s movie. 

Connor grunted some form of approval.

Evan sat on the steps next to him, opening his milk carton and taking a slow sip. Connor didn’t have a lunch, just an apple he had stolen from the vegetable counter and a plastic knife.

Why he had the knife he couldn’t say.

“I, uh, I like your hair,” Evan said. 

Connor didn’t respond at first. But Evan was sitting there, expecting a response. “Thanks.”

Quiet.

Connor carved small lines in the skin of the apple with his cheap plastic cafeteria knife. The knives they used were too dull and bendable to be efficient at anything. They would break just by trying to saw through a sandwich.

Evan ate his tuna sandwich slowly and mechanically. He looked like he wanted to say something but didn’t know what.

They sat like that for a good few minutes before Evan eventually broke the silence with a “what do you think happens when you die?”

“Jesus, Hansen. Are you always this morbid?” 

Evan paled. “No. I, uh, I just assumed tha-that-“

“Since I wear all black and act all emo that I think about death all the time, yeah?” Connor turned his focus back to the mutilated apple. “It’s cool. That’s what most people think.”

“No! I-I just-“

“It’s fine. Just drop it. I didn’t want to talk about death anyway.”

Evan seemed to be stunned back into silence. It wasn’t often that most people had someone shoot down a conversation right out of the gate, but unfortunately Connor was an expert. 

“Do, um, do you watch-“

“Probably not.”

Evan didn’t try to talk again after that. They stayed awkwardly quiet until the bell rang and Evan stood up, threw out his tray, and offered a sad “see you on Monday”. 

Connor didn’t move. He just sat there with his sad fucking decimated apple and wondered if he wandered out into the road, would the cars stop before they hit him, or would they not have time to process until oops, he was dead?

Slowly, he got up and threw the apple into the trash. He followed the herd of teens into the building, walking heavily to his next class. At least Ms. Jones let him sleep.

When he walked home, Connor ran across the street when he crossed. Something about dying from a car crash… that wasn’t how he wanted to go. 

Still, though, as he walked he couldn’t shake the nagging voices that told him to jump into the street, just to see what would happen.

Zoe had been in the library all day. She sang with soul.

Her voice was hoarse.

Connor couldn’t find his voice at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey sorry I’ve been mia for a while rip
> 
> Comment and leave kudos and please watch everything sucks on netflix


	3. Service

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A heavy weekend.

Usually, Zoe went out with her friends on the weekend.

She would get picked up at 10:30 and they would go out, thrifting and hanging out at the playground and painting the town red, as one does.

But this weekend was different. This weekend, Zoe and the rest of the Murphy house woke up at 7, dressed in black, and climbed into the car. 

As they drove, the family was chillingly silent. No one dared break the sacred quiet that had filled the car like a thick cloud. Zoe leaned her head against the window, smoothing the skirt of her black skater dress over and over and over again until it was less of an action and more of an obsession. It really wasn’t appropriate for such a formal affair, but Zoe was a bright and flashy person and her wardrobe reflected that. A small pink half-heart emblazoned with the word “BEST” shone on her neck, a little charm necklace Connor hadn’t remembered seeing since middle school.

Connor picked at his cuticles, watching the trees blur together. The branches were still barren and dead and probably wouldn’t start growing their leaves back until April. 

The house the service was being held at was small, cozy even. A line of cars stood on the curb outside of the house. A seemingly endless stream of families entered the house, all dressed head to toe in black and each holding some sort of food. Cynthia was brandishing a vegan lasagne while Connor had been saddled with holding the deviled eggs. 

When they got to the door, Reagan’s mother greeted them with a watery smile. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.

Immediately Connor felt hot tears fill his eyes. 

Which was extremely out of character for him, as the last time he had cried had been years ago. 

But he was standing there, gripping the platter of deviled eggs so hard his knuckles were white, his eyes twitching in a way that he knew meant ‘get out of here before the waterworks start’.

So he did. 

Connor didn’t even remember where he put the platter down, just that one minute he was standing next to his parents and the next he was pushing through crowds of mourners trying to find any sort of quiet, closed-off space.

Luckily, he found a bathroom.

Connor had barely closed the doors before the real show began. Tears made their way down the curve of his nose and cheeks, collecting on his chin and in the corners of his mouth. His nose was stuffed and dripping and he remembered why he didn’t like to cry. It was ugly and gross and all-around unpleasant.

Nonetheless, Connor cried like he never had before, using up almost every tissue in the box on the sink. In all honesty, he didn’t even know why he was crying in the first place. Maybe it was the fact that he needed to look at his college choices and he had two research papers due the next week that he hadn’t started. Maybe it was because he wanted to die so badly it hurt.

No. Not die.

Just… stop existing.

Descend into bliss. Let the void envelop him. He wouldn’t have to go to school on Monday or walk home in the snow or ever run the pads of his fingers against his house’s walls, feeling the interruptions in the paint underneath his touch. 

Connor instinctively reached up to toy with the strings of his hoodie, only to realize they were gone. Which effectively meant his only healthy coping mechanism was gone. 

So instead Connor ran his fingers over the grout on the cold tile floor, reveling in the scratchy Realness of it. Meanwhile, the tears continued to fall, completely ignoring Connor’s okayness.

Well, at least he felt okay. Granted, he was sitting in a stranger’s bathroom, crying and rubbing the ground, but at least he didn’t actively want to down a gallon of bleach, so that was a plus. 

Connor’s phone buzzed. It was a text from Zoe, asking where he was.

Followed by a text asking if he was okay.

He left her on read.

Connor didn’t know how long he sat there, letting his tears fall on their own accord, trying to steady his breathing. He wasn’t sure when his hand started bleeding from picking at the cuticles on his thumb with his scraggly index fingernail.

But after a while, someone knocked on the door. 

Connor tried to ignore the knocking, hoping the person would go away. What he failed to realize, though, was that when a normal person knocks on a door, gets no answer, and finds it unlocked, they open it.

Which is how Evan Hansen found Connor Murphy curled up on the bathroom floor.

“Oh.” The word seemed to fall out of Evan’s mouth, sitting in the air like a ticking bomb. “Oh. I, um, I’m sorry. I, uh, I-I can go if you. Um. Need me to.”

“No, it’s fine.” Connor cursed himself for his shaky voice. 

“Well, I, um, need to pee. So if you could just…” 

Connor nodded silently and left, standing awkwardly outside of the bathroom until he heard the toilet flush. Evan was washing his hands when Connor walked back in again, and he jumped when he saw him. 

Connor sat back down on the ground. Once he had dried his hands on the soft white hand towel by the sink, Evan sat down next to him.

“So.”

He didn’t follow up the statement, just let it hang. Connor traced the grout between the tiles.

Evan tapped his feet to no apparent pattern, his scuffed black dress shoes moving at speeds unmatched by any human. 

The tips of Connor’s fingers were starting to go numb.

From outside of the bathroom, Connor could hear remnants of conversation leaking in from under the door. 

“I don’t like crying,” Connor said suddenly, surprising both Evan and himself.

Evan laughed. “I doubt many people do.”

“It’s like those Verizon commercials, or whatever they are.”

Evan knit his brows. “Um. What?”

“You know, those commercials that are like-” Connor adopted a dramatic announcer voice, “some people like cable TV, like some people like spilling hot coffee and crying and shit. You know?”

“No.” Evan picked at his cast. “We, um, we have cable. I-it’s not that bad.”

Connor felt weirdly embarrassed. “Oh.” Desperate to fill the silence, he pointed at a small potted cactus on the sink. “Do you think it’s real?”

Evan squinted at the plant. “I don’t know,” he said, although it came out more like a mumbled “Idnow”.

Connor rolled his eyes and gnawed at the inside of his cheek. “You’re the plant expert,” he said softly. 

Evan stood up with a soft grunt and picked up the pot, tenderly touching the cactus. He laughed awkwardly. “That’s wick, alright.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Evan’s face turned a sickly shade of green. “Uh… the Secret Garden?”

“Like, the kid’s book?”

“No. Like the, um, the musical.”

Connor cocked an eyebrow.

Evan sighed deeply, his knuckles white around the pot. “It’s just. It’s a good show?”

“Sure.” Connor patted the tile next to him, and Evan retook his place on the floor, still clutching the cactus. “And I expect you were a theatre geek in middle school?”

Evan shook his head furiously. “No-no. The closest I got was, um, I was a techie? For one year? I never was able to be-be onstage because of the. The anxiety.”

“No. I never would’ve guessed.” 

“Yeah.” Evan laughed softly.

Once again silence fell over the pair. Connor knew he should be outside, socializing, offering condolences. But he couldn’t bear to leave the safe haven of the bathroom and the odd intrigue of the company of Evan Hansen. 

Connor needed to touch something. The grout had become numb and cold. He needed to feel something, anything, to convince himself he was still there. He desperately needed to feel the bumpy weave of one of Zoe’s old Girl Scout patches or the sensation of his bedroom’s popcorn ceiling underneath his fingertips. 

Connor’s mind continued on its twisted pathway. How do you know if you’re dead? It asked. You’ll only know if you reach out and touch something. Like the sink water or the towel or Evan’s face. 

Maybe you are dead and this is all an elaborate dream. This is hell and you deserve it. 

Just to quell the riot of voices in his head, Connor roughly yanked the cactus out of Evan’s hands and pressed his left hand against the spines.

What resulted was a prickling feeling of pain from each of the miniscule cuts on his palm and fingers and an overwhelming sense of relief. If he was dead, he wouldn’t be able to feel pain. He was alive. He was Real.

“What are you doing?” Evan exclaimed. 

Connor dropped the plant. “Nothing.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Is anybody in there?” Came a voice from the door. Evan jumped at the noise. 

Connor set down the cactus. “C’mon. We’ve been hoarding this bathroom too long.”

They opened the door and pushed past a very confused and slightly disgusted middle-aged woman, who scowled before closing the bathroom door behind her.

Evan offered one last smile before disappearing into the crowd to find his mother. 

Connor felt heavy, like the days when he got out of gym by going to the fitness center and doing goblet squats for half an hour with the lightest dumbbells he could find. His calves and arms ached, his fingers didn’t move as nimbly as they usually did. 

“Connor.” Zoe said softly from behind him. Connor turned. He had never seen his sister this broken. Connor wasn’t sure when she had started compulsively pinching the webbing between her thumb and index finger, but it struck him that she had been doing it all week completely under the radar. “The service is starting.”

Connor followed her from the strangers’ living room out into the backyard, where plastic folding chairs were set atop the small coating of hard snow. He took his seat in the sea of black-clad mourners, his parents on either side.

Connor didn’t remember much of the service.

Zoe spoke, he knew that. She recited a tearful poem and sorrowfully recounted her memories of Reagan. The space between her thumb and index finger was red and irritated. 

All he knew was that by the end of the service, the soft white skin of Connor’s inner arm was decimated with red scratches, a painful reminder of his own Aliveness.

When they got home, Zoe hurried to the bathroom and reemerged with a Spiderman band-aid on her hand. 

Connor stood under the hot stream of the shower water that night and contemplated what would happen if, by coincidence, he slipped as he reached for the shampoo.

He jumped a few times, but his feet always landed evenly on the wet surface of the shower floor. 

 

~

 

On Monday, the superintendent had arranged something he called a “One Day”. What the student body assumed was that it was meant to be a community sort of thing, with little workshops about student issues and drama and the summer reading. 

Connor had signed up for three workshops: one about mental health awareness, one about chamber music, and one for the tree planting club that Alana had involuntarily volunteered him for.

During the mental health workshop, in which they made paper masks in the art room, Connor plugged in his headphones as he painted slowly and methodically. The final mask was a simple navy base, with angry red marks around the eyes and mouth. 

When it came time to present the masks, Connor held up his and said “Pass.”

The chamber music group was, without a doubt, the most fun workshop. Only five people signed up, leaving Mr. Vanderwoude, the chorus teacher, to assign each person a part in All Ye Who Music Love and, after they had learned it, recounted his tales as a mullet-wearing theatre-loving high schooler.

Never had Connor actually enjoyed singing as much as being the one tenor in a shitty baroque piece with a bunch of other musical outcasts. 

The last workshop was a workshop Alana had created. She described it as “an open forum to discuss current events, honoring the departed, and our own mortality.” Connor, Zoe, and Evan had all been signed up without their knowledge. Alana waited for the three in the band room, clutching a clipboard as she rocked eagerly back and forth on her heels.

“Hello, hello!” She greeted the group, shoving a piece of paper in each of their hands. “I’m sorry for such a short notice. In a perfect world, I would’ve met with you all to run over our course of action before our workshop, but there was the funeral and all…”

Connor noticed the way Zoe flinched at the word. 

“Anyway. To start, we’re going to go in a line and say our name, grade, one fun fact about you, and one thing you want to do before you die. I have that written on the sheet so you don’t forget.” Alana took a deep breath. “After that, I will explain what our club’s mission is. Then Evan will say some words about the purpose of the cherry blossom tree, including reading a passage about the meaning of the symbolism of the tree I have included in each of your handouts. We will then open the room up for discussion where we can answer questions and debate things like life and death and everything in between. Sound good?”

They nodded blankly. 

Alana clapped gleefully. “Alrighty! Go over to the piano and practice what you’re going to say. Oh, this is going to be great!”

Slowly but surely, a good handful of students trickled in, taking seats and propping their feet on music stands. Evan mumbled his lines over and over again to the piano, moving his hands and lips mutely as he recited the same words like a prayer.

Zoe’s cartoon band-aid was gone, replaced by an ugly scab.

“Hello, friends! We represent a small club started just a mere week ago dedicated to the heartbreaking loss of Emma and Reagan.” Alana’s smile quivered. “They were family to some and friends to many. To start this workshop, we’ll introduce ourselves. My name is Alana Grace Beck, I’m a senior. One fun fact about me is that I’m an active member of the Girl Scouts. Before I die, I want to make a real difference in the world.”

Zoe stepped forward. “Hi. My name’s Zoe Murphy. I’m a junior. I play in the jazz band. One thing I want to do before I die is celebrate the summer solstice at Stonehenge.”

Evan smiled weakly. “My name is, um, Evan Hansen? I’m a-a senior. One fun fact about me is that I, um, I work as a junior counselor over the summers? One thing I want to do before I- before I die is, um, I want to go on a road trip.”

“I’m Connor Murphy.” Connor shifted on his feet, scuffing the toes of his boots against the white linoleum of the band room floor. “I’m a senior. One thing about me is that I like music, I guess. Before I die, I want to...” You don’t want to do anything before you die, the nagging voice said. You just want to die, plain and simple. “I want to live a little. Yeah. I just want to live, you know?”

Mumbled approval rippled throughout the room. 

Alana grinned. “Wonderful! Now, I’m sure you all are wondering what exactly we all do. We are a club of students just like you that were absolutely heartbroken about the tragic loss of our peers. We decided to do something to honor the memories of these young women taken from us so unfairly.”

Unfairly. That seemed fitting.

If Connor had been the one hit by a car, no one would utter the word ‘unfair’. Because if it was him, his death wouldn’t have been an untimely loss. No, it would’ve been some cosmic justice system giving the world a break by removing one more dark blot from the face of the earth. 

“So we decided to plant two trees in their honor right on the sidewalk where Emma and Reagan died.” Alana flipped a page. “We decided on Japanese cherry trees. Evan, could you read your passage about the symbolism of cherry trees?”

Evan nodded and cleared his throat an unnecessary three times before speaking. “Tied to the Buddhist themes of mortality, mindfulness and living in the present, Japanese cherry blossoms are a-a timeless metaphor for human existence. Blooming season is powerful, glorious and intri-intoxicating, but tragically short-lived- a visual reminder that lives, um, our lives, too, are fleeting. Why don’t we marvel at our own passing time on earth with the same joy and passion? Why do we neglect to reveal- uh, revel in life when it can end at any moment, or in the grace surrounding us everywhere: our family, friends, a stranger’s smile, a child’s laugh, new flavours on our plate or the scent of green grass? It is time, cherry blossoms remind us, to pay attention.”

“Beautiful,” Alana murmured. “Alrighty. We’re now going to open this discussion up for you to talk about anything. This is a safe space, you can ask or discuss anything you want.”

One kid at the back of the room raised his hand. “Yes, Matt?” Alana said with a sickly-sweet smile. “Thank you for volunteering.”

“What do you think happens when you die?” Matt asked, leaning back on two of his chair legs. 

Alana looked momentarily stunned. “Oh. Uh, well personally, I don’t really have an idea of the afterlife. I sort of hope there’s some sort of Good Place/Bad Place situation like on the TV show, and I try and work towards the Good Place. Anybody else?”

One girl raised her hand. “I like the Greek’s idea of the afterlife. One place for shitty people, one place for really cool people, and then Asphodel Fields for mediocre people. It’s sort of comforting that you wouldn’t go to just heaven or hell.”

The conversation trailed on. Some points were interesting, some were mundane. Connor sat on the piano bench, twisting one of his hoodie strings around his finger and watching Evan, who was eyeing Connor in a way that made him feel like he was on live television, someone watching his every move. Like that episode of Black Mirror when the prime minister had to have sex with a pig. Except he wasn’t fucking a pig, he was literally just sitting there fidgeting with his hoodie strings.

Every once in a while, Evan would part his lips a fraction of an inch like he was going to say something, but would simply exhale a melancholy puff of air and look away.

“What do you think, Evan?” Alana asked, breaking his cycle of staring at Connor’s face, the wall, the ceiling, Connor’s hands, repeat. 

“Uh… what?”

Alana pushed up her glasses with her knuckle. “Meredith was talking about if living every day as your last would really be reasonable.”

“I, um, I think it-it’s a nice sentiment, but it. Um. Nobody would go to school or work so nothing would get done, I guess.” Evan maintained his eye contact with the floor. 

“That’s a good point,” Alana said, much to Evan’s obvious relief. “If we were truly living every day like it was our last, the world would devolve into chaos. Has anybody read the novel We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach?”

And so it went. 

At the end of the workshop, after they had put away the chairs and Alana had offered her parting words, Connor quickly shouldered his bag and tried to leave the band room as fast as he could. He heard Evan calling “Connor!” behind him, a pathetic attempt to get the boy to slow down so they could walk together. 

Not to quote Clueless, a circumstance Connor tried to avoid at all times, but as if.

In his mind, Connor filed Evan under the ‘mild acquaintance’ category. Sure, if Evan got the role of Dickon in a school production of The Secret Garden he would go see and cheer him on, but he wasn’t going to talk to him or make nice with him or god forbid walk home with him.

As if.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yoooo sorry i've been so mia??? I've been busy and i was in the secret garden at my school (lmao) so i haven't had much time to update.
> 
> anyway i headcanon Connor has tactile sensory modulation disorder like me?? particularly the sensory over-sensitivity and sensory craving side of it. mike faist has described connor as a kid who "feels to much" so i mean... what if that's literal. idk.
> 
> be a pal and give kudos and comment and subscribe. thanks. be bae, not just fam.


	4. Scream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things come to light.

Connor had always been at the mercy of his mind.

He felt like a prisoner sometimes.

When he was really little, Connor remembered one time when his family was going to Florida to visit their grandparents and, without thinking, his seven-year-old self had screamed “BOMB!” in a crowded airport.

They ended up missing their flight.

As Connor walked to school on Tuesday, he plugged in his headphones and listened to the kind of pseudo-eighties music he only listened to on good days.

It was not a good day.

The girl singing’s voice cracked on the bridge. Before, Connor had always heard it as something sexual. Now, it sounded like she was about to cry.

As the girls sang about their love ‘burning them up’, Connor contemplated what it would be like to burn alive. How quickly would one die, and how painful would it be before you finally did die? Or would your nerves sort of short-circuit out and just let the flames take you?

Connor decided to do some googling once he got onto the school wifi. 

 

~

 

The tipping point of the day came just before English class.

From behind him, he heard a familiar voice call out “Connor!”, barely cutting above the hallway din.

Then a hand on his arm.

Evan’s voice was hopeful. “Are you coming to the meeting today?” He asked, keeping a shockingly firm grip on his sleeve.

And no matter how hard Connor tried to escape, he couldn’t wrench himself free, finding himself being pulled the wrong direction into a mass of students. He wasn’t even in control of his feet; they were simply stumbling along the path of least resistance.

“Connor?”

Connor could feel his breathing speed up. Once again his brain took over and his body was no longer his own. He didn’t like not being in control. He wasn’t in control, hedidn’tlikenotbeingincontrol-

“Let GO of my FUCKING JACKET!”

Instinctively, Connor threw his arm out, effectively loosening Evan’s grip while at the same time catching him in the chest, sending the smaller boy stumbling into a group of girls. 

Evan was barely breathing. Connor’s elbow had hit just that magic spot on his ribs, effectively knocking the air right out of him.

So he just ran.

He left the mess he had made behind and pushed his way through the horde of teenagers, all the while searching for somewhere safe. A hideaway.

For a moment, Connor’s eyes landed on the ‘Guidance Office’ sign. Maybe…

He kept running.

Somehow, Connor’s helpless legs led him all the way across school into the music hallway, where he found an empty practice room and slammed the door behind him.

The practice room was sparse, like the rest. An out-of-tune piano, two chairs, a music stand. Surprisingly padded walls. In the practice rooms adjacent, he could hear some classical soprano singing some opera-y piece and what sounded like a clarinet lesson. Or maybe the oboe. Connor never did pay attention in middle school band.

Connor sank down onto the floor, ignoring the continuous oboe assault in his ears. 

He felt…

There was no word.

His hair itched the sides of his face and Connor wanted nothing more than to rip it all out of his head. 

Instead, he yanked it all back and held his hands against his head like a rough ponytail. He sat there, shaking, trying to just… stop thinking. 

When Connor was younger, his parents took him to therapists.

He remembered, as a fourteen-year-old, describing that sometimes his mind felt like that song, the hall of the mountain king song. That his brain was just dissonant and frantic and kept getting faster and faster and faster and faster.

Connor wanted to scream.

So he did.

With his head in his hands, Connor let out a horrible, guttural scream that ripped at his vocal chords and folded his body in upon itself.

The oboe next door stopped with a squeak.

The soprano halted her singing and went, “What the fuck was that?”

Connor felt like he was sinking and floating, a specter in the eyes of others; not quite there and not quite gone. He often felt like a ghost. A poltergeist who did nothing except eat and make trouble, stuck in a painfully neverending loop. 

A knock came at the door.

“Are you okay?”

It was the soprano. Connor recognized her; she was in all of the musicals.

“Yeah. Yeah, Meredith.” Connor swallowed the thickness in his throat. “I’m fine.” 

“Are you sure?” Meredith had a distinctive voice, a sort of childlike nasality that played perfectly with her soft bob and her chic glasses and made everybody gape when she put down any fingers during never-have-I-ever. “That didn’t sound good.”

She was too nice. Connor had never trusted nice people. They were always hiding something. “I’m. Fine. Can you just leave?”

Meredith did genuinely look concerned, but Connor didn’t care. “Okay.”

She left, closing the door gingerly behind her. Polite.

Connor pulled out the first book in his backpack. 

The Witch of Blackbird Pond.

He had always liked that book as a kid. He was a weird kid; he read chapter books at a young age with long titles and confusing plotlines. When his mom dug out an old box of books she had read as a kid, Connor devoured every page. So when he found a battered old book from 1978 with yellowing pages and impossibly small text about witches and Puritans and everything in between, he instantly fell in love. 

Connor opened to a random page.

‘“Who would guess," Nat teased, "that I'd ever see you on a rooftop with straw in your hair?"

Kit giggled. "Are you saying I've turned into a crow?"

"Not exactly." His eyes were intensely blue with merriment. "I can still see the green feathers if I look hard enough. But they've done their best to make you into a sparrow, haven't they?”’

Nat Eaton reminded Connor of Evan, somehow. 

Of course, there was no trace of a dashing, confident seaman in Evan Hansen, but there was something…

Nat had always charmed Connor. It was absurd, being so drawn to a stupid book character, but ever since he was little he had wanted to hop on his boat and travel the sea, despite his tendency for motion sickness.

Honestly, Connor really should’ve figured out he was into men much earlier than he did. 

But what was past was past, and what was present was stressing him out, so Connor just read.

He cleared his head and read the book to the end before starting over from the beginning. Connor felt like he was Hannah Tupper. He was the witch, the outcast. 

Except he wasn’t a sweet old Quaker lady. 

He was actually dangerous.

Connor’s mind flashed back to Evan’s face, startled and betrayed as he struggled to catch his breath. 

Connor traced his finger along the rough page of the book, focusing only on the words.

“Goodwife Cruff,” he murmured, softly. Reverently. 

The book was an old friend.

The bell for lunch rang, snapping Connor out of his stupor. He mechanically packed up his things and made his way down to the cafeteria, where he bought a tuna sandwich and ate outside, watching the construction workers build the new extension. 

In French class, they watched a movie called Samba. It was a weird French indie movie about an African immigrant who fell in love with some sort of immigration worker, or some shit like that. It was embarrassing how invested the class was in the plot. Madame Bashir asked the class what he thought was going to happen to Samba and Connor responded, “il mourra.”

Later, when Connor looked up the plot, he discovered he wasn’t far off.

After school, Connor’s mind surprised him once again by leading him to the club meeting. Evan didn’t look up when he walked in.

He sat in the corner and watched as Alana carried on about choosing which chorus should do Sing Me To Heaven at the tree planting ceremony and traced the carved swears on the desk with his index finger.

His eyes felt too dry and there was a blister on his heel.

Zoe played an upbeat pop song with an incredibly fast chorus that Connor had no hope of understanding, and all he wanted to do was dance. Connor had heard the artist before; Zoe called her the ‘lesbian Jesus’. 

He wanted to move his arms and jerk his body in coordination with the music like they taught him to in fifth grade hip hop class. Like Zoe was doing.

Even Evan bopped his head.

Alana simply watched, a nervous smile on her face. Zoe danced her way across the room to her, shimmying around her like a shark waiting to attack. When Zoe broke out the body rolls, Alana’s face turned to one of fear.

She watched in abject horror and morbid intrigue as Zoe swayed her hips and tossed her shoulders forward and backwards to the music, running a hand through her hair and making Alana turn pink with every soft, orgasmic ‘yeah’.

Connor didn’t like thinking about his sister. 

But as always, when the song changed and Zoe went to go get Evan from his chair to dance with her, his mind took the wheel and told him one singular revelation.

Your sister might not be completely, 100% straight.

Also, it said as Evan awkwardly step-touched along with Zoe, he has a crush on your sister.

Connor sat with his feet on the desk as Zoe fruitlessly tried to teach Evan to do that weird hip thing, the backpack kid one. Alana came over and half-leaned, half-sat on the desk next to Connor. 

“She’s a good dancer,” Alana said just loud enough to be heard above the music. 

Connor frowned. “Yeah.”

Zoe walked ahead of Connor after the meeting. 

She had a skip in her step, something special about her walk. Something less… heavy. Not like Connor’s trudging gait, where his feet dragged on the ground and every step made his legs want to give up.

When they got home, Connor hid himself away in his bedroom, watching stupid youtube videos and blatantly ignoring the looming threat of a lab report due in two days. At dinner, Zoe was strangely silent. She picked at her green beans like someone cursed to only be able to eat one half inch piece of food at a time, which was strange considering Zoe loved green beans. Like, Connor might add, a fucking freak. 

No self-respecting teenager admits to genuinely enjoying green beans.

Only about ten minutes after dinner, someone knocked on Connor’s door.

“Fuck off,” he said. 

There was a moment of silence. “It’s me,” Zoe said through the door.

Connor didn’t answer. He didn’t like thinking about Zoe. He especially didn’t like talking to her.

Zoe, instead of fucking off like any rational person would, opened the door timidly.

“Hey.” 

Connor nodded a meager greeting. 

Zoe hovered in the doorway. “I-um. Do, um, I mean, uh, how do you-fuck.”

“What the fuck do you want?” 

“Do you like boys?” Zoe blurted. She put a hand on the doorknob as if preparing to bolt. 

Connor sighed. “I guess.” He didn’t like admitting things. Weakness could only be exploited. If Larry knew… well, he was already a failure. At least he still thought Connor could be saved by a successful wife, someone who was a doctor or a teacher or at least didn’t actively want to die. “Yeah.”

Zoe hummed. As if Connor hadn’t spilled any sort of secrets. As if he had told her the weather and she was contemplating what jacket to wear. 

“Do you fucking need anything else?”

Zoe frowned. “Why are you such a dick?”

“I don’t know.” 

Zoe left the room with a scowl and a raised middle finger. 

In all honesty, Connor didn’t know why he was such a dick to his sister. He just knew that thinking about her was never a pleasant experience.

Maybe she was his replacement. Connor was a fuckup. A defect model. Zoe was the new and improved version: sweet, pretty, good at things. Everything Connor was not.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t like her.

But he didn’t think that was true. Zoe had never felt like Connor 2.0. She was her own entity, completely disconnected from the hellhole that was the Murphy family. 

It was because Zoe did it all. And Connor did nothing. 

She sang, she played the guitar, did track, went to meetings about the school literature magazine. She said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘yes, ma’am’ if the situation arose. She took her boyfriends to dinner and chatted politely between sneaking chaste kisses with whatever sweet football player or awkward photography club member she had picked up. 

She was everything Connor was not.

In the shower, Connor let the water run down his face and imagined them as tears, like the very real sobs that had wracked Zoe’s body and filled the house with the mournful wails of a despondent ghost for weeks. 

His eyes were too dry. 

When Connor left the shower, humming softly some minor melody without any particular song attached to it, Zoe looked at him like an apparition floating by her bedroom door.

Not a son, not a brother. A haunt on the Murphy house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyo sorry I've been sort of mia i've just been really busy rip  
> i went and saw cosi fan tutti at the met with my music program and the performers were great but the play was shit. so that's my life.  
> please comment and give kudos i need validation


	5. Sign-Ups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor gets too into extracurricular activities.

Connor was no stranger to slippery slopes.

It seemed that his mother described anything and everything as a ‘gateway drug’. Weed was a gateway drug to cocaine. Skipping class was just a gateway drug to running away and joining the circus, as if anyone even still did that. 

If that was true, than taking Alana’s stupid fucking flyer that day in the cafeteria was a gateway drug to signing the sheet in the hallway outside the cafeteria. 

It was a simple sheet with blank lines for names and time slots with little leaves drawn around the edges and a hand-drawn title boldly proclaiming “SPRING MUSICAL AUDITIONS! THE SECRET GARDEN!!”

Something about the title struck a chord in Connor. A sort of Evan-ish chord.

There were manila folders with voice parts scribbled on them and sheet music. Connor picked out a tenor sheet and looked at the music, deciding that this would be his reconciliation with Evan. He would give him the sheet music as a gesture of goodwill. 

Somehow, though, he found himself putting down his own name in one of the audition slots. Maybe it was because he was holding the audition music in his hand. Maybe it was the girl giving him weird looks behind him. Maybe his mind had just short-circuited and without thinking he had scribbled a childish ‘Connor Murphy’ on the paper purely by muscle memory.

But for whatever reason, Connor was signed up for an audition on the Tuesday of next week.

During lunch, Connor plugged in his earbuds and tuned out the construction with the soundtrack of The Secret Garden. The tenor audition song was a strange song about winter and spring; it was certainly not something he would normally listen to, that was for sure. The man singing had a thick accent that Connor couldn’t quite place. 

Nevertheless, he found himself taken with the song. By the time the day was out, he had listened to the song until he knew it like he knew his own name.

It was calming, somehow, to focus on something so trivial as a song until it became background noise; something ingrained so thoroughly in the back of his mind.

Connor, for the first time in his life, understood theatre kids.

When he got home, Zoe confronted him about the audition list.

“I saw you signed up for the musical,” she said, pretending to be casual as she poured hot water into her mug, the tea bag dyeing the water a disgusting shade of brown.

Connor rolled his eyes. “I signed up to audition. It’s not like I’m going to get in.”

A grin stretched across Zoe’s face. “You signed up for the musical.” Her voice had the type of tightness of a person trying to hold back the laugh of their life.

“Yeah. Figured since everybody knows I’m gay now, I might as well live up to the stereotype.” Connor mumbled.

Zoe’s smile dissolved. “You didn’t have to tell me if you didn’t want to, you know.”

“Then why the fuck did you ask me?” Connor snapped. “Why did you need to know?”

“I just-”

“Look, it doesn’t matter. I’m not even going to go to auditions.”

“No!” Zoe blurted. “Sorry. It’s just that… you could use something to do.”

“Thanks.” Connor shouldered his backpack and moved to leave the kitchen. “I’m sure it’ll be a nice break from smoking weed and slitting my wrists.”

Zoe sat in defeated silence. 

Connor turned away as to not see the look on her face. 

 

~

 

Throughout the week Connor went to the practice rooms to, well, practice. Often times Meredith the soprano would peek in the window and wave cheerily. He hated it.

Connor was a pretty shit singer. His mother liked to gush over his voice, making him sing along to music from her high school days in the car when he really just wanted to jump out the window into the highway. But he knew the truth. Sure, he could carry a tune, but his voice was nasal and reedy and just in general not pleasant.

He despised listening to recordings of his voice. Whenever he heard voicemails, Connor wanted to shoot himself in the head.

But he had to admit it was fun to sing. It was fun to dramatically belt out a chorus, making up stupid gestures to match the lyrics. 

The sheet music burned a hole in his backpack because sometime, he needed to wake up from his musical-induced dream and mend his fences with Evan.

Musical fever seemed to have gripped the Murphy household. Zoe belted along to Newsies in her room as Connor practiced feverishly to at least attempt a Yorkshire accent (he learned later, upon further research, that Dickon was Yorkshire, not Martian). 

But he never practiced when his parents were home. Irrationally, he didn’t want them to find out. Connor knew they would be thrilled, but the thing about his brain is that it simply didn’t make sense. He wasn’t even going to go, anyway. He would just skip the audition slot and ignore any questions that came his way. 

The audition date crept closer and Connor became more and more distanced from reality. More often came the ghost feeling, the need to tether himself to the earth. 

Almost every night Connor locked himself in his bedroom, lying flat on his bed and blasting I Heard Someone Crying through his headphones. Reveling in the frantic dissonance of it, of the sheer anguish captured in the lyrics.

Scratching at his arms and legs and waist. Biting at his wrists. The Swiss Army knife on his bureau was inviting, but Connor couldn’t bring himself to grab it. It seems whenever he reached out his hand, the sight of his marred arms made him retch.

Connor didn’t even know who he was anymore. 

When he was younger, he wouldn’t have had doubts. He would’ve sat in silence. Connor used to never attempt to drown out his thoughts. Now, it seemed he was constantly trying to sweep his scrambling mind under the rug.

During class, Connor listened to Evan ramble a roundabout answer to some stupid question behind him. 

“Well, um, bees are extremely important to the environment be-because they pollinate flowers and therefore, um, help plant populations flour-flourish. Also. They, um, because they help the flowers it also helps our ecosystem and es-especially our food?” 

Connor nestled his head in the crook of his arm. Without thinking, he began to gnaw at the tender skin of his upper arm. 

“Bees are, um, they’re really, really important. And cute. And they’re the reason why na-nature is really pretty, and, um, bene-flourishing? Yeah.”

“Thank you, Evan.”

Connor made a mental note that if he was really going to audition for that fucking musical, he was going to embody Evan Hansen. If he wasn’t an anxiety-ridden mess of a person, he could be the perfect Dickon. But the role would probably be given to Matt or some other senior who had been in every show and didn’t even know what a moor is. 

Connor wasn’t blind, he had seen Evan talking animatedly to Kleinman about the giant redwoods and sequoia trees. 

Once, he was pretty sure he had caught him talking to a small potted bamboo plant in the environmental science classroom after school. 

The class rolled on. Connor’s arm started to hurt.

When it came time to take notes on global warming, Connor drew flimsy sketches and jotted down sparing details only when necessary. Moving the pencil felt like too much. 

Connor looked behind him too see Evan staring intently out the window, out into the small courtyard that the students weren’t allowed to use due to many fire code violations on the part of the school. When he looked out, expecting to see at least motion, there were only the scraggly trees creaking in the wind. 

There were dark purple bruises lining Connor’s arm. He pulled down his sleeve.

Connor tried to take notes, he really did. But somehow his writing turned into a small doodle of a cactus with a cowboy hat and a shy smile. The clock in the corner ticked softly and Connor thought he would go insane. 

His flyaways itched the sides of his face. Someone was clicking a pen and Connor wanted nothing more than to rip it out of their hands and break the fucking pen in half.

Everything felt too much. The pen, the clock, Evan’s feet tapping on the floor at supersonic speeds. Somebody’s perfume that smothered the entire room in rose and sage. 

Connor stood up. The chair screeched as it moved back and a few people winced.

The teacher didn’t even bother pausing their slideshow. “Connor?”

“Bathroom,” he mumbled.

The class turned their attention back to their notebooks, and Connor silently left the classroom, ignoring the bathroom sign-out sheet by the door. 

Connor liked walking the halls during class. During passing periods, the school was jam-packed with students, bursting at the seams with explosive energy. It was terrifying sometimes. Connor hated shoving past people, pushing somebody’s backpack out of the way. Even though he was the big scary upperclassmen and it really wasn’t an issue to push aside a freshman half his height, he still felt like he was caught in the middle of a stampede.

When everyone was in class, the halls were seemed ten times larger. Sometimes, Connor would see someone else walking alone, a mustard yellow hall pass crumpled in their hand. He would nod and they would give an odd half-smile.

There were senses you didn’t get surrounded by other teenagers. Instead of the mindless chatter of hundreds of students and the stench of sweat from kids who didn’t quite know how deodorant worked, every little detail came alive. 

A teacher talking to her class with the door cracked open. Somebody playing a dramatic history channel documentary. The hum of a fan, a sink turning on and off. 

There was a smell of burning rubber and overly buttered popcorn; and he was enveloped in a waft of cleaning products and pencil shavings and Axe body spray.

Connor had always been sensitive to smell. He remembered when he was younger, flying to go see his grandmother in Florida. Her condo by the beach always smelled like Pine-Sol and dog and fresh cut fruit. When he got home, he would hang his pajama shirt from his window and try and infuse the smell of the ocean and Lulu’s fur into his room before the wind erased the memories. Connor’s Grandmama had always been kind to him, fussing over him and actually listening to what she had to say. When she died, fourteen-year-old Connor didn’t cry. He lay awake the night after her funeral, tracing circles on the ceiling from his loft bed that he grew out of not long after and thinking about how no one would ever love him like she did.

He had been right. 

Connor had long moved on, but the scent of salt water still made him smile.

He took a deep breath as if expecting to smell the ocean in the middle of his school hallway; instead, he was overwhelmed with whatever shit the cafeteria was making.

Connor, true to his word, found the bathroom and tried to lean comfortably against the wall, scrolling idly through his phone. He wasn’t a germaphobe by any stretch, but there wasn’t anything short of a million bucks that could get him to sit on the floor of the high school boy’s bathroom. Alana had a video (Connor was pretty sure it was called a boomerang) on her instagram (alanageekchic99) of her holding the audition song for The Secret Garden and making a face like the simple act of showing sheet music to a camera made her wet her pants right then and there.

Connor felt unnecessarily obligated to leave a comment. He knew that Alana really only put these things on her instagram so that colleges looking at her social media would see how well-rounded she was, but the pressure of societal convention forced Connor’s finger to press ‘comment’.

connormurphywho: see you at auditions, i guess

Was it too harsh? Connor really didn’t care. Alana probably didn’t check her instagram anyway. 

Then again, Connor thought, leaving that comment did mean that he had to audition.

Shit.

At lunch, Connor would be lying if he said he didn’t wander over to where Evan was sitting and hover about a foot from his table as he pretended to look for somewhere to sit. 

“Have you heard of Janelle Monae?” Evan’s friend, Kleinman, was asking. “‘Cause her music is sick.”

“No-nobody says sick anymore, Jared. It’s not 19, um, 1993.”

Jared snorted. “Oh, savage.”

Evan turned and seemed to reach out before quickly retracting his hand. “Connor?”

“Oh.” Connor tried to pretend that he hadn’t totally been awkwardly standing by their table for thirty seconds, waiting for something that he wasn’t quite sure of. “Hi.”

“Wanna, um, want to sit with us?” There was something childlike in Evan’s eyes, a blind hope. Evan’s eyebrows seemed to be infinitely knit together, much like Connor’s; his right eyebrow was always resting higher than the other. 

Connor consciously shifted his eyebrow down. “Oh. I, um. I shouldn’t.” 

“Wh-why-what?”

“I’m not-” Connor took a step back, his eyes darting around the cafeteria. He needed an escape. “Have a good lunch.”

Connor hurried off, eventually hunkering down in the lobby, watching the seniors with off-campus privileges come and go with Dunkin’ Donuts coffees and boxes of sushi from the grocery store across from the school.

On his tray was some sort of weird Vietnamese sandwich the school had made in an attempt to expand from pizza and chicken patty sandwiches. Connor peeled back the tinfoil and picked off the jalapenos, then, after thinking for a second, the cucumbers too. 

Connor liked to eat. This was shocking, as his gangly arms and bony hips didn’t necessarily scream “I love eating!”. But he didn’t hate the act of eating. It’s true, some days when everything was too much and Connor couldn’t even stand to tie his shoes the thought of putting any sort of food in his mouth made him want to vomit. But for the most part, Connor was a beast when it came to eating, even if it was shit cafeteria food with too much mayonnaise and overcooked pork.

Soon, the sandwich was gone and Connor’s little carton of chocolate milk was drained.

Two girls walked in, giggling and laugh-singing a song from the last school musical. When one of the girls spotted him, she pointed directly at Connor and belted.

“If I’m not missed, I don’t exist; that’s the greatest sin!”

Connor’s lips instinctively fell into a frown. He lifted a hand in a halfhearted wave.

The other girl smiled. “I like your hair!” She called.

Connor attempted a smile. “Thanks. I, uh, like your shirt.” 

It was a grey Clash t-shirt that looked older than her. She grinned. “Thanks.”

They walked by, chatting jovially. Connor tossed his lunch tray in the trash. It felt weird, being nice. Connor had been closed off for so long he forgot what it was like to just be kind to a stranger. 

He was going to apologize to Evan tomorrow, he decided.

Come hell or high water. He was going to apologize.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey sorry i haven't been updating this really lmao  
> i've been working on other fics (check 'em out!) and there's been shit going on so  
> wish me luck on my bio test and leave nice comments i guess


	6. Spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor auditions.

On the day of the audition, Zoe was buzzing.

Apparently, she was going to be accompanying the auditions. Which was, to say the least, a frightening thought. 

Although Connor didn’t really know why.

To say that they had performed together would be the understatement of the year. When the two were little, they would put on little plays in their basement. Zoe would invite her friends and Cynthia would sit and watch. When they were a bit older, they were both members of the Honors Chorus in their elementary school. Connor didn’t see that as much of an accomplishment, as almost everyone who tried out got in. His parents tried to convince him it was special to be a part of the choir, but it was a bit difficult to feel extraordinary in a chorus of sixty kids who all thought they were hot shit. 

In the morning, Zoe could barely get her cereal down. 

“I just can’t wait to hear everyone!” Zoe said, setting down her spoon for the fiftieth time. “I can’t wait to hear you!”

Connor just frowned. “I probably won’t go.”

“You won’t get in if you don’t audition,” Zoe retorted, as if this was a fact unknown to most people.

“Yeah, that’s the last thing I care about right now.”

“You need to change. If there’s one thing Ledoux hates, it’s underdressed auditioners.” 

Connor looked down at his flannel and sweatpants. It looked like he had rolled out of bed, which was the look that seemed to often define him. “Perfect.”

All day she pestered him. She would pass him in the hallway and call, “make sure to warm up!”, to which Connor would usually respond with an upright middle finger.

Alana cornered him in the library during lunch. She had a way of holding her styrofoam tray perfectly horizontal, something that baffled Connor. Like she was a prisoner in a very strict jail. Granted, they all were, given the American education system, but Alana would be the prisoner put on probation after a month. Connor would probably be shanked and drowned in a toilet within the week. Alana sat down at the table across from Connor, setting down her perfect straight tray. “I saw that you signed up for the musical?”

Connor looked back down at his sandwich. “Wow, no hello?”

“I just didn’t know you did theatre.”

“I don’t.”

“Then why’d you sign up?” Alana took a bite of her apple but kept her eyes trained on Connor. Which was fucking creepy as hell. 

“Dunno.”

“Because I’m the student director. Mr. Ledoux’s right hand, if you will.” Alana leaned forward and beckoned Connor to lean in too, which he declined. “And I think you would be a perfect Neville Craven.”

“Oh, great. The evil guy.” Connor knew he was being a dick. His words just seemed to fall out, no matter how asshole-ish they were. 

“He’s not- I just think-”

“It’s fine. Don’t have an aneurism.” 

“Oh. Sorry.” Alana leaned across the table, peeking at his book. “What are you reading?”

“Nothing.”

“Romeo and Juliet!” Alana said a bit too loudly for a library. She pointed to the cover of Connor’s book with a face like she was having an orgasm just reading the title. 

Connor closed his book and frowned. “I’m more of a Hamlet guy myself.”

“Oh, me too. All about those ‘words, words, words,’ you know?” Alana grinned. “I love Shakespeare. In Freshman year we did Romeo and Juliet and my teacher would pick names out of the hat to read and I never got picked, not once.” Her face fell. “It was pretty disappointing. But then I played Juliet in the Shakespeare Club’s production, so it all worked out in the end!”

“Cool.” Connor stood up and shoved his book in his bag. “I remembered, I, uh, I need to talk to a teacher.”

“Oh. Well, this is a place of academics, not socialization. I get it.” Alana’s perfect smile twitched at the edges, as if she wanted to frown but the corners of her mouth were pinned up. “Hey, would you be interested in joining my study group? You had a really good analysis of Animal Farm. We could use a good English person.”

“Sorry,” Connor said quickly, “I have a D in English.”

This was a lie. He rarely showed up to class, but he had been pulling a solid B in English since sophomore year. Teachers like his papers, apparently. 

“All the more reason you should join our study group!” 

“I need to go.”

Alana’s smile was pretty much spasming. “Okay. We have a meeting after school tomorrow. See you there?”

This caught Connor off-guard. “Oh. Yeah. Sure.”

“Great! Anyway, I’ll see you at auditions. Good- I mean, break a leg.”

Connor mumbled a thanks and left the library as fast as he could. 

Now there were two people who not only expected him to be at the audition, but to do well at it. Which meant that he pretty much had to go. Not that he truly cared about what they thought, but Connor didn’t think he would be able to bring himself to look at Alana’s painful, quivering smile again.

Connor dragged himself through the rest of the day. 

In history class, he was paired with a girl who spent the entire time yapping with her friend about getting ‘scooped’ over the weekend, whatever that meant (Connor was pretty sure he didn’t want to find out).

“What about you?” The girl asked, seemingly unaware of the unspoken rule that you do not talk to Connor Murphy, even if he has a leaf in his hair and a paint stain on his cheek and he’s about to walk into the wrong class (real thing that happened. It was a bad day).

Connor initially ignored her, thinking that she couldn’t possibly be talking to him. She sighed. “I said, what about you?” She repeated, enunciating each word as if talking to a two-year-old.

Connor pointed to himself incredulously. “Me?”

“Yes, dumbass.” Okay, she was very clearly new to school. If you were going to throw away social rules and talk to Connor Murphy, you certainly don’t call said Connor Murphy a dumbass. “You do any scooping lately?”

“What?” 

“Sex, idiot. Who’ve you scooped lately?” The girl rolled her eyes. 

Connor didn’t usually feel uncomfortable in school; he was usually the intimidator. But this girl was really pushing every button. “What did you get for number three?” Connor said, trying to do anything to get her to stop talking about ‘scooping’. “I said Cortez.”

“Don’t talk to him, Brit,” her friend whispered, clearly not caring if Connor heard. “He’s fucking crazy.” 

‘Brit’ must’ve gotten the memo, because she turned around in her seat to face her friend. “Besides,” her friend said, “he’s probably the one being scooped.”

Connor raised his hand. “Miss Hyde?” He said, not even bothering to get her attention first. “Can I use the bathroom?”

The teacher looked up from where she was helping another student. “Yeah. Sure.”

Connor pushed his chair out from the desk with a sickening screech and stalked out the door. Maybe leaving was a sign of weakness, but he was at the end of the rope. It was either leave in a walk of shame or flip a desk and scream something hideously embarrassing like, “I’m not even gay!”

He was gay, though, if that was what they were insinuating.

He’d never had a girlfriend, but that was probably more because he was a fucking freak who terrified anyone who got to know him. He might not be gay. There was a chance. He’d never even kissed anyone, so there was no way to know. There was only hoping and scouring the face of every girl, trying to find the one that would fix him.

Connor walked the halls, trying to empty his brain. Somehow, the only thing he could think of was Jesus camp in middle school. 

There was no easier way to feel insane than to have This Little Light of Mine stuck on repeat in the back of your head. 

In a stroke of providence, Connor turned his head and inside the computer lab was Evan Hansen, in a perfect vignette of computers and printers and the fluorescent lights reflecting off his hair, framed by the large windows looking in. Connor touched his bag as if reassuring himself the music was inside. He pushed open the doors and walked in.

The printer was whirring, and Connor made his way over in order to look like he actually had something to do. He pulled the sheet music out of his bag and offhandedly grabbed whatever paper was just spat out of the printer. 

“So,” he blurted. Evan looked up like a deer in the headlights. “How’d you break your arm?”

“I, um, I fell out of a tree.”

“Fell out of a tree?” Connor couldn’t stop the involuntary laugh that forced its way out of his throat, more of a cough than a laugh. It hurt coming up. “Well, that is just the saddest fucking thing I’ve ever heard, oh my god.”

Evan pulled at the fringe starting to accumulate at the bottom of his cast, probably from what looked like compulsive picking. “Yeah. It’s um. Yeah.”

“I- you know the musical? The spring musical?” Connor winced. “You know.”

“It’s, um, The Secret Garden, right?” Even Evan’s smile was timid. “I heard. Pretty- pretty cool.”

“I wanted to give you this.” Connor awkwardly thrust the sheet music towards him. “I know it’s probably too late to audition, but I felt like I needed to apologize, and this was the only way I could think of how? That doesn’t make sense. Fuck. Sorry.”

“N-no. It’s fine.” Evan looked down at the music.

Connor looked at the leftover paper in his hand. “Is this yours? It was on the printer. ‘Dear Evan Hansen,’ that’s you, right?”

Evan made some sort of attempt to grab the paper, but Connor kept his hold. He scanned the document. It looked like a letter of some kind. And halfway down there was a name Connor recognized… 

“‘And then there’s Zoe?’ What the fuck does this mean?” Connor looked up. Evan looked scared; he needed his letter back, he could tell. But Connor had too much bottled up and there was no going back now. “You… you have a crush on my sister, don’t you. And- and you wrote this creepy shit about my sister so I would find it and freak out, right?”

Connor’s voice was too loud, too loud. He needed to calm down. Like, now. Before he did something he regretted.

“Well, I’m not a freak! And my sister would never fucking date a creep like you!” Shit. Shit, shit, shit. “So why don’t you just fuck off and leave us alone?”

Evan squeaked out some sort of terrified noise. 

“I’m not the freak, you’re the fucking freak!”

And the paper falls out of Connor’s hands, and Evan is crying, and This Little Light of Mine is still fucking stuck in his head.

Connor stormed out of the computer lab and paced the halls furiously before stealing away to the bathroom. He sat on the floor (gross) of the handicapped stall as if in a daze. Not doing anything. He didn’t even pull out his phone; he just sat there, his knees hugged to his chest and his hair itching the sides of his face. 

The bell rang, and Connor could hear the thousands of stomping feet from the hordes of kids ready to get the fuck out of the school building. It vaguely struck Connor that he had left to ‘use the bathroom’ and hadn’t come back. But him missing class was hardly anything to write home about. 

A handful of people came in, and Connor wanted to leave. But he couldn’t leave with them here.

His phone buzzed. 

With an unsteady hand, Connor pulled out his phone and opened the text. It took him three tries to get his password right.

Janus-Faced Bitch:  
Auditions are in the chorus room btw

Right. Auditions. Connor’s voice probably sounded like shit. 

Janus-Faced Bitch:  
Gabby told me you stormed out of history?? like .. dramatic and shit?

Connor rolled his eyes and suppressed the urge to respond.

Janus-Faced Bitch:  
I expect an explanation in the car

He waited until the boys left the bathroom. Only when it was perfectly silent did Connor emerge, wash his hands (twice), and check his phone once more. 

Janus-Faced Bitch:  
Are you coming??

Janus-Faced Bitch:  
Dickhead????????

Janus-Faced Bitch:  
Con if you don’t come down here and audition i’ll tell m&d everything

Janus-Faced Bitch:  
Every fucking thing bitch!!

Me:  
jesus fuck zoe im coming godamn it

Janus-Faced Bitch:  
I’m still telling them about the mean girls bootleg

Me:  
go to hell.

Connor eyed the bathroom stall. Was it too late to go back in and hide for the rest of his life?

No. Alana and her perfect smile expected him and Zoe would be on his ass forever if he didn’t at least show up.

Connor dusted himself off, washed his hands (again) and left the empty bathroom. If the auditions were happening in the chorus room, that meant Connor had to actually remember where the chorus room was. Next to the gym hallway was the music hallway, an ironic juxtaposition. A gaggle of theatre kids were already milling about, talking and chanting and singing and doing weird culty warm ups. 

Connor got weird looks walking down the music hallway. He knew that people would question him, but he didn’t expect to be so unwelcome. Theatre kids were already the freaks of the school, why would they mind one more?

One girl turned to Connor and asked, “what do you want?”

Connor flipped her off.

“He’s auditioning, Brianna,” Meredith butted in, pointing to the audition list like the knight in shining armor she was. “See?”

Connor offered her a small smile. 

Auditions had already started happen by the time he had gotten there, and Connor could hear vague noises from inside the chorus room. One kid was sitting in the corner, reading a script. Connor slumped down next to him and pulled out his book.

Just as Juliet made the plan with the Friar to fake her death, Alana poked her head out of the chorus room door and chirped, “Connor Murphy?”

Connor hauled himself up, dragging his feet on the way to the chorus room. The kids waiting eyed him suspiciously, as if they expected him to pull out a gun and shoot the director while he was in there. 

Alana beckoned him in. “I’m glad you’re here, Connor. I’ve spoken highly of you.”

Connor wanted to scream.

Zoe was seated at the piano. The director was sitting behind the teacher’s desk with a notepad in front of him. “Hello! Connor Murphy?” He nodded. “I’m Mr. Ledoux. I’m the director. Zoe will be playing accompaniment. I have a few questions before we get started.”

It felt like a doctor’s appointment, and Connor’s hands were shaking. “Okay.”

“Have you been in any of our plays before?”

“No.”

“Do you have any performance experience?”

“I did dance for a long time.” Connor hated admitting that.

“What kind of dance?” Mr. Ledoux was writing like crazy; Connor hated it.

“Tap, jazz, and ballet.” 

“Can you do a glissade for me?”

Connor did.

“Rond de jambe?”

Connor did.

“Jete?”

Connor did. His clothes were not the best for dancing, but he managed. Mr. Ledoux looked pleased. 

“What part are you doing?”

“Tenor? I’m doing Winter’s On the Wing.” 

Mr. Ledoux scribbled something down then nodded. Zoe grinned and flashed a thumbs-up to Connor before playing a starting note, nodding when Connor seemed to internalize it, and started to play.

The opening was one high, continuous strings note, but Zoe made it work.

Connor felt like his hands were going to vibrate off his wrists. 

“Winter’s on the wing, here’s a fine spring morn.”

He hated how dead he sounded. Channel Evan, channel Evan, channel Evan!

“Comin’ clean through the night, comes the May I say.”

Connor felt more nervous now than he did before. He had no reason to feel nervous. After all, he probably wouldn’t even get in. He didn’t want to get in. 

“The winter’s taken flight, sweeping dark cold air out to sea, spring is born, come the day I say.  
And you’ll be here to see it.   
Stand and breathe it all the day-”

Connor was starting to get into it. He was pouring ever ounce of energy into the words, the melody. Not thinking. Not worrying.

When Zoe played the piano trills, it sounded like a robin. 

“Stoop and feel it,  
Stop and hear it,  
Spring, I say!”

As soon as Zoe launched in with the real instrumental backgrounds, a large smile split Connor’s face. It was March in a freezing cold chorus classroom with no windows and no green, and Connor could feel spring.

 

“And now the sun is climbin' high,  
Rising fast on fire,  
Glaring down through the gloom,  
Gone the gray, I say.  
The sun it spells the doom  
Of the winter's reign,  
Ice and chill must retire  
Comes the May, I say…”

Connor didn’t remember the last time he had smiled for this long. He threw himself into the song, and by the end he didn’t even know where the song had went; it was like he had completely blanked out until the last note of the song. He wished he could do that more. Just forget where the time went, but not be mad about it. Not erase the time with drugs or a cloudy haze of pain. Just while away the hours with something genuinely enjoyable. God knows his parents would be happy.

But he was back, and the chorus room’s fluorescent lights were blinding, and the air smelled like mulch and rain and flowers. 

“Spring…  
I say!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> connor with a yorkshire accent?? yes please  
> long chapter!! wow!!!  
> so um yeah if ya wanna talk to me message me at smolweedboi on tumblr or connormurphywho on insta  
> i'm friendly i promise  
> kudos and subscribe and all that jazz


	7. Sigh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Callbacks.

Long story short, Connor got a callback.

Zoe actually screamed when she heard. Like, legitimate banshee shrieking. 

At this point, Connor had to tell his parents about the whole auditioning business because, naturally, they needed an explanation to why Zoe was screaming bloody murder at five in the afternoon. 

Or at all, really.

They came running up and Larry pretty much kicked down Zoe’s bedroom door.

Of course, the first word out of their mouths was “Connor!”

But Zoe was sitting at her desk, and Connor was sitting on the edge of her bed, peering over her shoulder at her open laptop. 

“What the hell is going on?” Larry said, almost as loud as Zoe had screamed.

Zoe spun her swivel chair around to face them. “Connor got a callback.”

“For what?” Cynthia asked; her voice was heavy with suspicion.

“The school musical.” Zoe wore a shit-eating grin. “He tried out and he got a callback.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Cynthia exclaimed. It did nothing to defuse the tension that hung in the room.

Larry humphed. “Why did you try out?”

“Why do you think?” Connor shot back. “Because theatre kids are all into orgies and hard drugs and I wanted to get in on the action.”

“He just wanted to do the show, I swear.” Zoe’s eyes were pleading to her parents. 

“I wish you would tell us these things, honey.” Cynthia walked over and placed her hands over Connor’s. He pulled his hands away, instinctively bringing them up to play with his hoodie strings. “Man’s not an island.”

“I don’t think that’s how you say it,” he deadpanned. In honesty, he was touched. But he didn’t permit any semblance of appreciation to show on his face. 

Connor didn’t allow himself the luxury of emotion. 

“Well, good luck.” Cynthia laughed awkwardly. “I mean break a leg.”

At dinner, Zoe debriefed Connor on everything he could possibly need to know about callbacks while his parents just watched in rapt attention, almost as if they needed proof that the conversation was truly going on right before their faces.

Connor just nodded mutely along and picked at his green beans. 

Connor hated beans.

The next day at school, Alana found him in the library again. This time, however, Connor initiated the conversation. “Why the fuck did you give me a callback?”

Alana sat down across the table. “Because you’re good, Connor. You have a great voice and excellent stage presence and you’re probably the best dancer at this school.”

“Bullshit.”

Alana sighed, probably more because of the swearing than the self-hatred. “Well, we’ll see. I think you’re great.”

“Sure.”

“I’m serious. I’m excited to see you at callbacks. You know, I even recommended for you to read for Dickon.” Alana said this as if this was some sort great favor. 

“Oh. Thanks.” Connor was fidgety, but he couldn’t think of what to do with his hands. So his fingers just twitched in his lap.

“They’re probably going to have you dance,” Alana noted, glancing under the table at Connor’s shoes. Connor stilled his fingers. “So you might want to wear your gym sneakers.”

“I don’t have any.”

“Wh-what? I mean, you do take gym, right?”

Connor’s fingers still wanted to move. “Yeah.”

“Then how do you do gym in… combat boots?” Alana seemed to think this was the most confusing concept in the world.

“I don’t.” Connor shrugged. “Look, I don’t care at all. About anything. But if there’s one class I couldn’t care less about, it’s gym.”

Alana humphed. “I just think gym’s probably the easiest class to get a good grade. But that’s your decision.” 

“I focus in the classroom. That’s gotta count for something, right?”

“It counts for a third of your grade.” Her voice was condescending, whether she meant it to be or not. 

Connor liked Alana, he really did. She was sweet and genuine and tried to help people. But she was the kind of person to grate on your nerves on a bad day. And every day was a bad day for Connor.

“Yeah, fuck that.” Connor rolled his eyes. “I appreciate the career counseling, but I’m pulling a solid B- average, so I think I’m set.”

Alana looked like she was about to congratulate him, then paused, thought, and cocked an eyebrow. “Just the other day you said you had a D in English.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, are you an elephant?” Connor picked up his bag and moved to leave. “I’ve got to go.”

“See you at callbacks!” Alana called after him.

“Yeah, whatever.”

After school, Connor wandered the halls aimlessly as he waited for callbacks to begin. He had gotten used to his normal clothes, so it was weird to walk around school in dance-appropriate leggings and a plain black t-shirt. 

In one classroom, the a capella group was warming up. Connor watched them sing. 

They weren’t very good.

At 2:53, Connor made his way to the auditorium along with a horde of seasoned theatre geeks. Meredith shot him a thumbs-up. 

The director and Alana were chatting with someone in workout gear and dance shoes, who Connor inferred was the choreographer. As he walked in, Alana pointed Connor out to the maybe-choreographer.

Connor couldn’t read lips, but he hoped they weren’t just gossiping about his history with printers. 

At exactly 3:00, Alana climbed the stage. “Hello, everyone!” She called. She didn’t have a microphone, but her voice cut above the chatter in the auditorium. “Welcome back. We’ll be doing dance first, so do what you need to do and get onstage. And take a number from Shoshana first.”

The maybe-choreographer, Shoshana, held up a stack of those stick-on nametags and a black sharpie. Students pulled on jazz shoes and sneakers and went over to her, emerging with a bold black number on their chests. Connor was number 19.

Shoshana led the students in a little warm-up to some Alanis Morissette song, which Connor slacked on. He stood in the back. Hopefully they wouldn’t see him.

The dance was simple. It was pretty stupid, just five bars of music and some arm movements and jumpy things. Not actual dancing. Connor got it pretty quickly, and he thought he would be fine by staying in the back row and not drawing attention to himself.

“Alright, rows switch!”

Shit.

Connor tried to stay in the back but ended up getting pushed forwards, so that he was standing directly in front of the choreographer. They did the dance what seemed like a million more times. 

Eventually, she let them go. Connor ached- not from the activity, but from having to do such a mind-numbing task over and over again. 

God, he hoped the rest of the play wouldn’t be like that.

Afterwards, the students were corralled downstairs into the chorus room, where they talked loudly and were generally obnoxious. The director walked into the room with Alana trailing behind, looking quite pathetic. 

“Alright!” He announced. The students kept talking. “If I don’t call your name, please take a seat in the back of the room and stay quiet. You can do homework or whatever, I don’t care. Just don’t talk. If I call your name, come up front and take a script from Alana. I’ll give you a minute to look over your script and then we’ll run the scene. Got it?”

People halfheartedly nodded. 

“Good. Julia Gregg, please read for Martha. Jackson Malouf, read for Colin. Claire Fanbrook, read for Mary.”

The three, beaming, went up front to take their temporary roles. Connor pulled out his computer. Normally, he wouldn’t willingly choose to do homework, but given that he had no other options, he figured it was the best course of action.

So Connor filled out his history worksheet about Charlemagne with the vague focus one has when tying a shoe. 

For about half an hour, Connor sat against the wall and did mindless homework as the students chatted idly next to him. 

As the designated time for callbacks slowly petered out, the director called, “Connor Murphy, read for Dickon.”

Shit.

Connor stood up and dutifully took his script from Alana, who tried to wink. It looked more like an awkward blink, but he got the message. 

The girl reading for Mary, Charlotte, looked up at him incredulously, which was fair. Connor didn’t really fit the type.

But nonetheless, he did the scene and stood there awkwardly when it was over as the director scribbled a novel in his notebook. 

Alana grinned politely. “You all may leave.”

The room burst into noise. Kids who had only read one scene (or none) complained to Alana that it wasn’t fair, to which she smiled and apologized demurely. Connor escaped out the emergency exit by the music offices. He had figured out long ago that the alarm was broken, and it was the quickest way to get to the sidewalk. 

Connor’s feet were aching from jumping around in heavy combat boots, and he was really regretting not bringing an old pair of sneakers instead (not that he would ever let Alana know that). 

So instead of walking half a mile home, he loitered by the band room and ambushed Zoe, who said, “sure, but that’s favor 7 this month. You’re gonna have to work hard to pay off these debts.”

To which Connor responded, “I’ll suck your dick.”

Zoe flipped him off.

The ride home was tense and awkward. Zoe hummed along to a song on the radio, and although it was a really shitty song, Connor had a painful memory of how much he missed her singing. When they were not much younger, Zoe sang all the time. Connor teased her relentlessly, because that’s what big brothers were supposed to do. 

She never sang at home anymore, not when anyone was around.

Connor wondered if he was the reason why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lmaoooo sorry I’ve been gone for so long here’s a short chapter rip  
> I promise I’ll be better!! I’m thinking of making myself a schedule for this to just get it done but who knows


	8. Shed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A community service project.

Alana had made a group chat, which was never a good sign.

Not good sign number two: the first text on the chat was, “Guess what!”

It was Friday, shaping up to be a warm March weekend after an ever warmer week. The mountains of snow that had fallen were almost all melted, save for small piles here and there; the leftover snow was grey and unpleasant, and no one was sad to see it go.

But a surprise “guess what!” text, from Alana Beck of all people, did not shine brightly on a weekend of sleep and relaxation. 

Zoe, of course, texted back. 

Janus-Faced Bitch:  
what!!!!!!

AB:  
I talked to Reagan’s family…

Janus-Faced Bitch:  
??

AB:  
And I’ve arranged for us to come over this weekend and help them build a shed!!!!!!

Well, this was just wonderful. 

Somehow, Alana had completely diverted the easy and straightforward task of planting two fucking trees into a whole community service operation.

AB:  
I talked to them and they said Reagan was a huge help when it came to projects like this and they’re really struggling without her. They’ll appreciate any help we can offer.

Me:   
im sick

AB:  
I saw you in school today and you looked fine.

Me:   
its tiberculosis. larrys aleeady succimbed. only god can save us niw.

Janus-Faced Bitch:  
Jesus Christ 

555-291-5219:  
Get well soon :(

Janus-Faced Bitch:  
He’s not actually sick you fucking idiots I’m looking at him right now 

Attached was a picture taken from the doorway of Connor’s room, where he was lying sprawled on his unmade bed, sans pants (his parents refused to turn the air conditioning on. He was at least wearing underwear, but still.), flipping Zoe the bird.

Me:  
take that diwn right now

Me:  
is that ant way to treat a duing man

Zoe did not comply, which meant that everyone had the image of Connor in plaid boxers forever burned into their minds. 

AB:  
I’ll see you all on Saturday at the Walgreens on Main. We can converge there and walk to Reagan’s house together. That way, we won’t crowd the driveway.

Janus-Faced Bitch:  
Me and connor will definitely be there!! 

Me:  
go fuvk yourself

 

~

 

Connor and Zoe arrived at the Walgreens last. Cynthia had, of course, been overjoyed when she found out the siblings wanted to do something so wholesome in their community. She didn’t let them leave without giving them each two bottles of water and slathering them with sunscreen. Connor felt like he was five again.

Alana was inside buying something, which left Evan waiting outside by himself. He kept nervously eyeing the cash register closest to the door, as if he was going to call the cops on him or something. 

“Hey, Evan!” Zoe called from across the parking lot. 

Evan winced and raised a hand in a meager greeting. 

He also had a bottle of water in his hand and a smear of white under his eyes, unblended sunscreen from what Connor could infer was another all too enthusiastic mother. 

Zoe walked right up and leaned against the wall (the wall that Evan was being very careful not to lean against). “Where’s Alana?”

“She’s inside,” Evan jerked a thumb towards the door. “She needed to buy something?”

Zoe nodded. “Cool, cool.”

They stood in silence for too long. 

“Have you ever built a shed?” Zoe asked no one.

Evan shook his head. “I-I didn’t get to do engineering and design in middle school.”

Zoe frowned. “Why?”

“Mandatory counseling.”

Something about the deadpan way he said it made Connor laugh, but he choked it back and ended up coughing instead. Evan offered his water bottle. 

The doors opened automatically, and Alana came bounding out of the Walgreens with a small plastic bag. “You’re here!”

Zoe grinned. “Yep.”

Alana lifted the bag up a few inches. “I just needed to buy some spoons.”

Zoe snorted. “Spoons? At Walgreens?”

Alana looked mildly hurt. “Well, we recently hosted an ice cream social and used up all our plastic spoons. So we needed new ones.”

“You hosted an ice cream social and didn’t invite us?” Connor butted in.

Alana paled. “Uh…”

“It’s cool,” Zoe said, patting Alana on the shoulder. “He wouldn’t have come if you’d invited him anyway.”

Connor made a face at Zoe, but Alana looked relieved. “O-okay! It’ll only take us about five minutes to walk to Reagan’s house, and Jason said he’d watch our cars while we were over there.” 

“Who’s Jason?” Zoe asked.

“The cashier.” Alana swung her bag of spoons jauntily and grinned. “Let’s walk!”

The teens, all in varying degrees of agreeableness, followed behind. 

Reagan Muletti’s house was large. It wasn’t a Murphy house, that was for sure, but it was a three-story carriage house that dwarved the houses next to it. 

A man who Connor assumed was Reagan’s dad stood on the front stoop. “Hello! Welcome!”

Alana waved back cheerily. Reagan’s dad beckoned them to the backyard, where a bare-bones skeleton of a shed was sitting in the corner of the yard. He surveyed the four, then the yard. “Here’s what I’m thinking,” he said. “The girls can help me build the doors, and the boys can paint the boards for the walls. Sound good?”

They nodded. “Great! Alana and…”

“Zoe.”

“Alana and Zoe, come with me. I’ll show you what I want for the doors. You two,” Reagan’s dad pointed at Connor and Evan, “there’s a bucket of paint and brushes in the shed. I trust you know how to paint.”

Evan looked positively terrified, though Connor couldn’t place why. “Yes, sir,” he squeaked out. Connor just nodded.

The shed in question was, objectively, tiny. It was only really meant to house a snowblower and a lawnmower. However, it had been decided that the wooden panels of shiplap would be painted inside the shed and then nailed to the outside. This put Connor and Evan into a very uncomfortable situation of doing something that requires a lot of movement, such as painting, in a space no bigger than the average closet. 

The boards were all leaning against the frame of the shed, with a single bucket of paint and two paint brushes. 

“Should we, uh…” Connor surveyed the work. “Just… split the boards? Like, you take that side and I’ll take this one? And then we can meet in the middle.”

Evan nodded. “I-I guess.”

Connor picked up a brush, dipped it in the paint, and immediately dripped white paint over his shoes. “Shit!” 

“You, uh, you need to wipe one side of the brush off on the-the rim, like this.” Evan showed Connor how to properly dip the brush, and no paint dripped off. “See?”

“Yeah, fine.” 

They got to work and painted in silence. It was weird working so close to somebody he really didn’t even know. Evan was still pretty much a stranger to him, and here they were, brushing hands as they reached back into the paint bucket. It was hot and the pine boards filled the shed with a smell that vaguely reminded Connor of the wood chips at camp around the flagpole. The shed was so small it was almost impossible to stay out of each other's way, and often the boys would bump hips or knock heads reaching for more paint and laugh it off, their faces red and shining. 

As they got closer to the end of the boards, it got difficult to reach and they found themselves squished up against each other, sharing paint and body heat and sweat. Connor’s face was hot and he felt a little dizzy, and he didn’t know if he was embarrassed or had heat stroke. 

Zoe played weird country music that Evan seemed to know, and he hummed along as they worked. 

It was comforting. The smell of pine, the humming. The soft acoustic guitar playing from Zoe’s bluetooth speaker. 

Eventually, the painting was done. 

“Let’s not tell them we’re done yet,” Connor whispered. “I don’t want to have to do something else.”

Evan looked like he wanted to argue but just smiled instead.

Neither of them wanted to touch the wet paint, leaving about four feet of sittable space in the shed. They sat with their bodies pressed together. 

“I got Dickon,” Connor said awkwardly. “In the musical.”

“That’s amazing!” Evan said. “You’ll- I mean, I think you’ll do great?”

Connor was regretting wearing a sweatshirt, even as thin as it was. “Thanks.”

The rest of the afternoon passed in an even rhythm of work. In a few hours, they had done as much as they possibly could and everybody was feeling a bit worn out from exhaustion and heat. 

The teens lounged on the lawn, drinking strawberry lemonade that Reagan’s little sister, Thalia, had brought out to them. 

“Did I tell you Ben Creer hit on me?” Alana said. 

Zoe snorted. “Student body president Ben Creer?”

“Yep. During a student council meeting.”

“What did he say?”

Alana shrugged. “I don’t even remember. But it was like, I’m the president of the AGSA, Ben. I’m so gay.”

Zoe snickered. “Like Connor!”

Silence fell over the group. Connor felt his blood run cold.

“What the fuck did you say?”

Zoe’s face was paper white. “No, I-”

“You fucking bitch.” Connor put down his glass of lemonade on the grass. “Why the fuck would you say that?”

“I just- it just slipped out!” Zoe protested. “It was supposed to be a joke.”

“Well, it’s not a fucking joke!” Connor’s voice was too loud. In a window upstairs, Thalia pressed her face against the glass. Connor recoiled into himself instinctively, drawing up his knees to his chest. “You can’t just say shit like that!”

Evan reached out a hand awkwardly. Connor could feel fingers graze his shoulders. “Don’t fucking touch me!” He screamed.

Connor had knocked over his glass and he could feel strawberry lemonade soaking the cuff of his sweatshirt sleeve. He stood up stiffly. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

Reagan’s parents said their goodbyes stiffly. It seemed that Connor’s outburst had soured their opinions, and it wasn’t likely they would be invited back again.

Connor was perfectly fine with that.

On the ride back home, the car was quiet. Zoe didn’t even turn on the radio. They just sat in the too-stuffy car, neither wanting to be the one to make the first move for the air conditioner. 

Zoe took a breath as if to say something, but just sat there with her mouth open, like a gaping fish.

“I didn’t like him touching me.” 

Zoe snuck a glance from the road to look at her brother. Her eyes looked… softer, somehow. “It’s the-the sensory thing you have, right?”

Connor scowled and turned to look out the window. 

“I refuse to believe it was all Evan.” Zoe sighed. “Look, I don’t care about how, like, fucked up and emo you are. You just need to stop pulling this crap. Figure your shit out.”

Connor wanted to scream at her. To tell her it wasn’t that easy. That she didn’t fucking understand, that she never would. But his throat felt tight. He pulled at the skin on his neck hard enough to hurt until finally he could breathe.

And he didn’t say shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heeeeyyyyyyyyy  
> guess who's losing track of the timeline riippppp  
> this took me a long time to write lmao  
> please leave comments?? they make my day legit

**Author's Note:**

> hey they always say write what you know right so this is inspired by events that happened in my town very recently but very clearly changed I felt like pushing my feelings onto a character so why not Connor amiright
> 
> so anyway please leave comments and kudos this my heart yearns


End file.
